Shearsmith gives the same account of Swedenborg’s habits of sleep, as his gardener at Stockholm. He had no regard for times and seasons, days or nights, only taking rest as he felt disposed. This was naturally to be expected, considering the peculiarities of his seership. At first, Shearsmith was greatly alarmed, by reason of his talking day and night. Sometimes he would be writing, and then he would be, as it were, holding a conversation with several persons. But as Swedenborg spoke in a language Shearsmith did not understand, he could make nothing of it. Shearsmith was nevertheless well pleased with his lodger. His servant told Mr. Peckitt, after Swedenborg’s death, that “he was a good-natured man, and that he was a blessing to the house, for they had harmony and good business whilst he was with them.” A short time before his death, he lay for some weeks in a trance, without any sustenance. Swedenborg’s pension preserved him from all pecuniary cares. Yet in his Diary we read: “I have now been for thirty-three months in a state in which my mind is withdrawn from bodily affairs, and hence can be present in the societies of the spiritual and celestial. Yet whenever I am intent upon worldly matters, or have cares and desires about money, (such as caused me to write a letter to-day,) I lapse into a bodily state; and the spirits, as they inform me, cannot speak with me, but say they are in a manner absent. This shows me that spirits cannot speak with a man who dwells upon worldly and bodily cares; for the things of his body draw down his ideas, and drown them in the body.—March 4, 1748.” This experience is worthy of record. Most of us, in our own way, know the truth of it, from heart experience. Whatever his motives were, he would receive back no proceeds from the sale of his theological works, but dedicated the whole to religious subscriptions. To beggars he seldom gave anything. In his writings, he in several places protests against the sham charity which satisfies itself by mere alms-giving. He tells us that habitual beggars lead vicious and impious lives, and that to give them money is rather to curse than to bless them. Swedenborg did not lend money; for that, he said, is the way to lose it; besides, as he remarks, he required it nearly all to pay the expenses of his traveling and printing. In his later years, Swedenborg had no library but his Bible, in various editions, and his own manuscripts. What need had he of the books of men, when he knew the heavens,—and the glorified authors of earth, in states of wisdom they never dreamed of here? Swedenborg seldom went to church; for, as he said, he “had no peace in the church, on account of spirits, who contradicted what the preacher said, especially when he spoke of Three Persons in the Godhead, which amounted in reality to three Gods.” Swedenborg’s long and arduous labors on earth were now ended. Let us approach his death-bed with reverence, and observe how a good man can die.